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Friday, 14 August 2015

Not today Satan

Another month down on the mish fam. craaaaazzzzzyyyyy.

We spent last pday with the Crossmans for the last time before they leave for Utah! We went to Sagres again which is just too beautiful for pictures to capture. It is also almost as windy as southern Alberta, so it was a bit cooler there than here in olhao.

Sister Andrade and I travelled with the Crossmans back to Lisboa on Monday night because Sister Andrade still had some papers that had to be figured out for her residency here. We didn't end up getting into Lisboa until around 11:00 that night and then we were out the door and headed to Seixal by 7 the next morning. We had to meet up with her aunt in Seixal, and then did a bunch of running around to different places to try and get things figured out. I really had no idea what was going on the whole time, I just followed orders! haha It was a bit of a crazy day! By the time we got back to Olhao that night we were too exhausted to even care about the infestation of ants that invaded our house while we were gone.......#awesome

On Wednesday we had divisions with Sister Cardoso and Sister Mancuso again. It seems like we have seen them so much in the last 2 transfers, so it's a good thing we like them. haha I was able to do divisions with Sister Mancuso this time, which was awesome! She has so much energy and it is so fun to work with her.

I studied a lot about faith this week. President Tavares has been stressing faith a lot in our work lately because our mission seems to be struggling a bit. The Talk by Gene R. Cook called "Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ" completely changed my perspectives on a lot of things, but especially on my work as a missionary. Needless to say, sometimes difficult times are necessary to help us realize "what more we can do." I spent this week trying to improve in every aspect of my work. I started with writing down every rule that I found in the missionary manual to try and realize what I could do to be more obedient. I tried to completely forget about any fears I have and talk with everyone. I am trying to do everything I can think of to try and better myself and increase my faith. It is a work in progress, and it is not easy, but I know that we will see miracles! The hardest part about this, is that the miracles don't come until after we exercise our faith. We are working harder, but satan seems to be working harder too. There was one day this week when Sister Andrade was a bit frustrated and discouraged about things here, but we had an appointment set up with Dalia-our golden investigator we met last week. I told her that we needed the spirit more than ever in this lesson, and we weren't going to let our discouragement get in the way! Not Today Satan. Not Today. We said a prayer and I was literally so stoked and excited for the lesson! But just to demonstrate the principle that it is only after our faith that the miracles happen, when we showed up to Dalia's apartment she wasn't there.....hahaha To be honest I just had to laugh after because God definitely has a sense of humor. And sometimes agency is the devil! Oh my. But still I am just going to keep exercising my faith. I would not trade this experience for anything. I can honestly say I am so grateful for every trial and every difficulty I have had. It is so clear to me that I grow more in times of difficulty than in times of ease.